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Star Trek model kits
The development of Star Trek model kits began shortly after Star Trek: The Original Series began to air in . AMT acquired the license to produce plastic model kits based on the series and announced their plan to produce a kit of the . The model's resounding success at retail prompted AMT's development of a follow-up kit, resulting in the creation of the Klingon battle cruiser in . It was specifically designed for AMT by Matt Jefferies. The D7 design was soon featured in the third season of Star Trek by the show's producers. These two models were the only Star Trek models AMT released while The Original Series was still in production. The only other company, besides AMT/Aurora, that produced model kits while the series was in production, though only just barely, was the Japanese company KSN Midori, in the guise of two differently sized USS Enterprise kits, for the Japanese market only. Over the next decade, and after The Original Series had wrapped, AMT would expand upon the line to include the Romulan Bird-of-Prey, a Spock figure kit, and scaled versions of Star Trek props. Originally, AMT chose not to license the Star Trek name outside of the US. Aurora Plastics Corporation, another noted model kit company, leased AMT's molds and released the models outside of the US. The Spock figure kit originated from Aurora but a reciprocal leasing agreement gave AMT the exclusive rights to release the figure in the US. AMT bought the Spock figure's tooling from Aurora in . At the release of , AMT was owned by (or rather its parent company Lesney Products & Co. Ltd.) and began to expand its range to include the refit-''Enterprise'', the battle cruiser, and the long range shuttle. AMT continued to release kits based on the following its acquisition by the Ertl Company in . AMT/Ertl subsequently gained the licenses to produce model kits based on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. Revell-Monogram were able to outbid AMT/Ertl to license ships from Voyager. AMT/Ertl's original Star Trek line came to an end in . Following AMT/Ertl's merger with Racing Champions, the company tried to revive the Star Trek line with four re-releases in . The line's revival strongly improved after when the AMT division was acquired by Round 2 LLC and was given a new and unique AMT branding. Since the 1990s, many other companies including GEOmetric Design, Tsukuda Hobby, Polar Lights, and Bandai have been licensed to produce plastic Star Trek model kits. Star Trek model kits, both the official ones as well as the below-mentioned "garage" kits, have been covered extensively in a wide range of hobby magazines and book titles concerning themselves with the subject, and of which the British Sci-Fi & Fantasy Models publication has, until recently, especially warranted attention. Licensed model kit chronology "Garage" model kits Over the years, from the 1990s onwards after Star Trek: The Next Generation had premiered, a large number of "amateur" (meaning not officially recognized), both unauthorized as well as unlicensed and often short-lived companies, dubbed "garage kit makers" by the model kit community, sprung up, producing Star Trek model kits. These "companies" often produced lesser-known canon or fan-designed non-canon classes of starships which were typically made out of glass reinforced plastic (GRP), commonly referred to as "fiberglass" or "resin" (somewhat incorrectly, as this term also refers to more modern composite plastic materials). Fiberglass "conversion kits" to improve or customize officially-released models have also been released, along with "aztec-ing" painting templates, and custom decals. Typically, the production run of items produced by these companies tended to be quite low, numbering in the few hundreds instead of the thousands as produced by the officially licensed model kit companies, thereby becoming relatively rare and quite expensive. This was due to two reasons. Firstly, as amateur companies, these garage companies could not afford the professionally high quality grade steel molds, as utilized by the professional model kit companies, from which the kit parts were cast. Instead lower grade molds were used, typically made out of cheaper material such as baked clay, plastic resin, gypsum or plaster, all of which susceptible to wear and tear far beyond of those used by the professional model kit manufactures, meaning these molds worn out faster by far. For these same (economical) reasons, garage kits tended to consist of far fewer parts, cast as solid pieces, meaning that the completed models were quite heavy compared to those having been constructed out of the injection molded plastic parts (being vacuformed as opposed to those of the garage companies which were simply cast) of the model kits from their officially licensed counterparts. The quality of garage kits using those molds near the end of their lifespan tended to diminish as cast parts exhibited an ever increasing amount of air bubbles and excess "flash" on the parts, due to widening apertures in the seams of worn out molds. Constructing garage kits therefore required a certain amount of experience on the part of the modeler. and a Starcrafts garage kit of his design]] Secondly, aside from the practical reasons to keep production runs low, there was a legal one as well. As unauthorized companies, keeping production runs low was also a means to operate under the radar of CBS Consumer Products (formally the Paramount Marketing and Licensing Department), thereby dodging copyright legalities. It appeared however, that the official franchise has, until recently, turned a blind eye to their activities, as no litigations against any of them were hitherto known to exist, publicly at least. No doubt this was due to the fact that many of them were relatively short-lived as well as the fact that virtually all of them initially produced Star Trek ships that were not produced or planned by any of the officially licensed model kit companies at the time, even if some of those ships were yet to be produced by them later on, usually at a different scale. In turn, garage companies themselves usually observed strict adherence of not producing ships that were produced by the official model kit companies (though some of them did in later years, again at different scales) and not showing any official imagery on or in their box-art or instruction sheets as well as not distributing their products directly but rather through official intermediaries. The initial lack of legal actions against them, has emboldened some of the still surviving garage companies, such as Starcraft Models, to employ professional, full-fledged websites, marketing their products. However, while former franchise owner Paramount Pictures had condoned the existence of these companies, new owner CBS Corporation appears to be of a different mindset and has recently started to crack down on these "interlopers"; the Starcraft Models website for example went unexpectedly dark in late 2015, and has not been up since. UK-based Warp Models (one of the first), and US-based Federation Models, Nova Hobbies and Starcrafts (the one currently known as "Starcraft Models") were among the best-known unlicensed garage kit makers. Warp Models in particular was noteworthy, as they only produced canon ships and where possible in-scale with those of the AMT product-line. For , John Eaves used a garage kit of the USS Enterprise-C to create gold models of it which were used in the USS Enterprise-E's Observation Lounge. With the exception of Warp Models, most garage kit companies preferred to release their Star Trek products uniformly as 1:1400 scale model kits, a scale corresponding with that of AMT's 1988 Enterprise-D model kit, but otherwise rarely used by the official model kit companies as far as their Star Trek product lines were concerned. As a format, garage kit companies not only turned out to be popular for model kits, but for 1:3900 scale gaming miniatures as well, those originating from FASA in particular, and several specialized gaming miniatures garage companies have also been concurrently in existence. Appendices See also * Star Trek starship miniatures External links *Selection of "garage" companies producing unlicensed model kits at federationmodels.com *An exhaustive listing of Star Trek model kits produced by licensed and unlicensed companies at starshipmodeler.com Category:Collectibles